Thanks Dad!

Today, after 35 years, my dad is retiring from his veterinary practice. When I was young, I loved riding around with my dad on weekend farm calls because I was usually guaranteed to see an adorable litter of puppies, a new foal, or sometimes even get to sit atop a horse while dad tended to a sick animal. While I absolutely love these memories, it's the lessons that dad was quietly teaching me that I treasure even more today.

Grin and Bear It

All of our teddy bears got annual inoculations.  I'm not kidding. We'd make a trip to Dad's clinic, where syringes would be waiting. Dad went all out. It wasn't "for pretend" without the needle, nor was the syringe empty. He'd fill it up (with water I now assume) time and time again until all our teddies were sure to be safe from illness for the coming year. (This particularly came in handy when our dog decided my sister's bear needed rhinoplasty--no risk of rabies in our household!). Really it's so simple--dad made something scary, fun. And so as long as I can remember, I really haven't minded getting shots. And good thing, because boy, did we have to get a lot to move to China!

 
It's the Great Pumpkin!

It was Halloween, and I was 7 years old at best, because we were still living in our first house. Mom and Dad were in the process of building a back deck on the house, where I was happily carving my enormous pumpkin. My masterpiece completed, I lassoed my arms around it, and watched in horror as it slipped out of my arms, over the yet to be installed railing, and splattered a few yards below. I can still remember how devastated I was. How I went unintelligibly gurgling with remnants in hand to Mom and Dad. I also remember thinking it was so unfair that it didn't happen to Darcy's pumpkin as well--ahhh sisters. So what does Dad do? He drops everything, runs out to his truck to get needles and sutures and STITCHES MY PUMPKIN BACK TOGETHER. With a little bit of sweet-talking, by the time he was done, Dad had successfully convinced me that my intimidating Scarface Pumpkin was the coolest pumpkin on the block. I don't know about the pumpkin, but my dad sure was! Just goes to show you, don't go crying over spilt pumpkins!

 I could tell so many more stories, about how dad was at always at every concert, every volleyball and basketball game. How he built his work schedule around our horseback riding lessons so he could trailer us back and forth. How he slept in the barn when my horse Crystal got sick. How he used his job to make science fun for my sister and me. How he greets all our pets with "hi Worthless," and yet it is one of the most endearing things I've ever heard.

When it comes down to it, dad, I'm so glad you were a veterinarian. It makes me so proud to clearly see how much passion you have for your work, and how exceptional you are at it. Better yet, I'm so glad you're my dad.

Happy retirement Dad. You deserve it so.
Love, D1

Building the BEST playhouse--with electricity and slide escape!

Assembling a military-grade slingshot

 

T-minus 24!!

Is it just me, or has this been the LONGEST week ever?!?! Between the two of us fighting off yet another round of Chinese intestinal turbulence and worrying if the Puyehue ash cloud would even let us land in Australia (as of yesterday all flights have resumed!!), it felt like tomorrow would never arrive, and well I suppose it still hasn't.... Our bags are packed, bathrooms are sparkling, fresh sheets are on the bed to welcome us home, the floors are vacuumed, fridge cleaned out, and the self mani/pedi has been completed, smudged, fixed, chipped and fixed again. There is seriously nothing for me left to do but watch the clock. Get me to the beach!

Usually about now I would be frantically washing and ironing clothes, and packing about three times too much (I am my mother's daughter!). But thanks to very strict weight regulations on our intra-Australia flights, we are only able to check 1 40-pound bag each. Just stuff my carry-on to the brim, you say? Nope, that's maxed out at 15 pounds (which is one heavy purse!). This is far from the end of the world by any means. It's just that our last vacation was only 2 weeks in comparison and yet I checked two huge bags (yes dear, 8 pairs of shoes are always necessary!), while Brian only had a carry-on. How do men do it?? (Brian's wife did have to teach him that in the civilized world we have the luxury of wearing a clean pair of socks each day...) The clincher for this trip, is that we're taking all of our scuba gear, so Brian and I have to SHARE (gasp) 1 bag for a month's worth of clothes. Okay, I exaggerate, only a week's worth, because everywhere we're staying has laundry. But still! I was so worried about this I started packing days ago, and I am happy to announce the feat was easily accomplished. So when you see us both in the same outfit and non-cute shoes picture after picture for an entire month, please know that we did do laundry on occasion and that Brian was made to pack a whole week's worth of socks.

Proof.

The three B's

With apologies to Bach, Beethoven, and Brahms, today I'm handing the blog over to Brian, blocks and ballast tanks.....

Every few days I accompany one of the inspectors on their block inspections (ships are built in pieces or “blocks” which, once completed are assembled on a slipway).  This day was one such day. A little after noon, just as the thermometer was cresting 95, we got geared up and headed out to inspect a part of the ship I had yet to visit--the ballast tanks.  All you need know about ballast tanks is that there’s some very confined spaces deep in the bowels of any ship, to which I was now being introduced.

To access these blocks you have to be part monkey, part Olympic gymnast. They are up on steel support trusses, about 6 feet off the ground, typically with no ladders to be found. So you find what you can and make a little pile of junk on the ground under the block to get you high enough to reach the first rung of the scaffolding, (which is hanging precariously off the block and you pray that when you grab it the entire structure doesn't collapse because from what you see it shouldn't be standing at all).  Amazed when it doesn’t collapse, you swing your foot backwards to catch the block above and behind your head, push off of that while releasing your grip on the first rung and fling your arms out for the 3^rd rung which is JUST high enough to allow you to get your feet onto the first rung and start climbing up the scaffolding as if it were a ladder.

Alternatively, on the occasions you're miraculously able to find a ladder, you then have to deal with ship yard workers playing the part of the movable staircases from Harry Potter, pulling ladders around randomly wherever and whenever they want, with no regard for who may be trapped by this action.  I don’t know how many times I’ve found myself trapped at the top of a block I’ve JUST climbed because some helpful soul decided to move the ladders I had used to gain the summit to some other block.  Did Sir Edmund Hillary have to deal with such tactics in his day?

So somehow we make it to the top of the block. Now using a mixture of scaffolding and reinforcing beams, we’re faced with a 4 story climb down to what will become the bottom of the ship. Once at the bottom, you get down on your hands and knees, and somehow find a way to fit through a tiny circular opening about halfway up a wall to get into the ballast tank.  The opening appears to be about half as wide as I am and leads to a pitch black compartment about 10 feet wide by 10 feet long, and about 4 feet high with reinforcing beams on the floor and ceiling running the length of the compartment and spaced every 3 feet or so.

To make it even more fun, this block was sitting out in the sun so the metal which we were standing and crawling on was piping hot, and workers were welding and grinding above our heads. So from a crawling position, I reached my arms then torso through this tiny opening, place my hands down on the other side shimy, shimy, shimy, and finally squeeze through onto the other side.

Once through, I moved aside for one of the Chinese quality control inspectors, who had his own method of getting through.  Put one foot through, duck your head through, then simply step over to the other side!  They are SO small!  He laughed at my surprise and told me tai da le (too big).  Once inside this room the fun had only just begun: this was only the first of about 30 sections of the ballast tanks, all connected in a strange sort of labyrinth of rooms and each needed to be inspected.

Wuxi woes

It was hot. Humid. And our bank was closed.  

Not closed for lunch. Or just for the day. Closed. Gone. A la "welcome to China, where construction is happening 24 hours a day and a bank can disappear overnight" closed. You gotta love this place. 

So off we trudged to the next ATM we knew of. Already sweating (and maybe whining just a tad) I suggested we consider just throwing in the towel on our trip to Wuxi and going home to sit by the A/C. An idea my husband cruelly nixed. So money finally in hand, we hailed a cab to the bus station. 

It should be noted that co-workers had told Brian we could get a private car to and from Wuxi for 600RMB (just shy of $100). Well, we've turned in to real misers here in China (you can live so cheaply here, who wouldn't!?!?) so it became a matter of pride that we do this trip as cheaply as possible. So with two 28RMB round trip bus tickets in hand, we were thinking we were pretty dang cool.  Forty minutes later we were in Wuxi and on a city bus to Ling Shan for 2RMB each. That's right. Total trip cost so far: 60RMB. We rock. What we didn't realize was that taking the the 2RMB city bus meant it would take 2 hours to drive what should be a 30 minute trip. But hey, the bus was weakly air conditioned so I wasn't complaining.

Four hours after leaving our apartment, we finally arrive at Ling Shan and faint when we realize the admission price is nearly $30 per person! That's almost a month's worth of groceries here! Talk about tourist trap--they get you out in the middle of nowhere and realize you're willing to pay almost anything since you bothered to make the trip.

So what is Ling Shan? Ling Shan is the site of a 1,000 year old Buddhist Temple (which it turns out you can't really explore), an 88m statue of Buddha (9th tallest statue in the world) and two palaces. Friends' opinions had ranged from really enjoying Ling Shan to describing it as Chinese Disneyland. Brian and I are definitely in the latter camp. We wanted to leave almost the moment we entered. The only thing historic about Ling Shan is the temple. The rest is an artificial, manufactured tourist trap. The statue was built in 1996. The two palaces were completed in 2008. And the clincher--there is a gaudy "musical dynamic fountain" with a huge lotus flower that spins and opens up to reveal baby Buddha, complete with waterworks and light show. And when you leave, you're forced thru a gift store and food court the size of Costco. 

So we climbed up to the base of the statue, snapped some photos of interesting details and agreed that despite the ticket price, we had no desire to stay and explore in the hideous heat. We started walking back to the bus stop, knowing that TGIFridays was waiting for us back in town. Hello cheeseburgers and margaritas! Miraculously, there was a cab passing by and our Scrooge-like approach to this trip went out the window. For 95RMB we made it back to Wuxi in a mere 30 minutes only to find that like our bank, TGIFriday was no longer in business. What a day.


Meanwhile back here in Jiangyin it's been raining the last few days and I couldn't be happier. We leave for Australia in 15 days and the temperature in Perth today is only 63! I promise the lower the temperature and humidity, the cheerier my blogs will get!

Five Signet Palace

Tacky lotus fountain with Buddha in the distance

Fountain detail

Buff warrior

Another statue of Buddha fighting off devils

Prayer tablets were for sale everywhere.

You know it's bad when you start taking photos of colorful garbage....

For those not up to the climb, there were several smaller replicas of Buddha

View from the top

Why does he look unphased by the heat???

When I look like this!?!?!

Carnivorous fish gutter decor

Prayer wheel

Almost free!!

Slightly obnoxious blog. Sorry. (not really)

Brian and I have been dreaming of our upcoming Australia vacation for months now (only 20 days to go!!!!). While we're very excited about all the diving, koala cuddling, and relaxing we have planned, we've also been dreaming of the things we can't wait to do/purchase because they simply don't exist in China.

Our souvenir wish list:

10. For Brian: socks that fit

9. For me: Jeans. The Chinese genome is enviably missing the hip gene.

8. Sneakers for our behemoth feets.

7. Cheese. GOOD cheese.

6. Vanilla Extract

5. Cornmeal. Oh Cornbread, how we've missed you!

4. Chocolate chips that don't cost $45 for one bag. I'm not kidding! Okay, okay, it was a 5kg bag, but still, that's darn expensive for me to have (sneakily) eaten 80% of the bag!

3. Memory foam mattress pad (we've already located Costco in Melbourne for this beaut of a purchase!)

2. Eat (snarf, inhale, etc.) delicious, juicy cheeseburgers. Lots of them.

So I realize this is a pretty mundane wish list and you're most likely thinking that reading this far has been an utter waste of time.  Fear not.

At the top of our non-touristy-to-do list is:

1. Date night at the movies. 

In English.

No reading subtitles.

But not just any movie.

This movie.

Three days before it's released in the States.

NEENER.

NEENER.

NEENER.

For those Harry Potter fans who are already seething over this, when we get back to China two weeks later, we'll be able to buy the DVD.

For $1.

Duanwu Festival (Part 2)

At the end of my last post, (which if you have time, you'll want to read first), we were in Yuecheng, stuck on the wrong side of the river, trying to connect with Stella's friend Joanna on the other side. 

So off we trekked to the nearest bridge, only to find the first access gate to the stands locked. So was the second. And everyone exiting was wearing an official lanyard. So we stopped at a roadside food stand and soon we had an audience of about ten people involved in the discussion of how the heck we were supposed to get to the bleachers for the races on this side of the river. Eventually a security guard in a golf cart was flagged down and convinced to give us a ride to the main gate. Which was a long way away, especially since the battery was almost dead, giving it a top speed of perhaps 5 miles an hour. So he drove us right through the police barricade and dropped us off. We were finally (almost) there! One more 15 minute walk and we found Joanna. We now had 3+ hours to kill until the next races (which many people continued to inform Stella and Joanna on our behalf, the Russians had advanced to the afternoon semifinals, so not all was lost). So what does one do while waiting for dragon boat races to start? Why you visit your official Jiangsu Provincial Racing Pigeon Training Center, of course!

This motel's gone to the birds! yuk, yuk yuk....!

They wouldn't let us go in any further...but they told us they had 6,000 pigeons!

Next stop? Why, let's go pick peaches of course! Stella didn't know this, but it turns out the gentleman selling the peaches is the uncle of another of Stella's friends we happened to meet later in the day. The peaches we were allowed to pick were in a hothouse....so not that sweet. They are strangely crunchy and remind me more of a plum than anything else. But Stella and Joanna assured us they were a type of peach.

Darling daughter of a worker at the orchard. They weighed our fruit on their bedside table.

 

So now it's time to finally head back to the races. On the way we saw the Russian team. We naturally had to adopt them as our home team for the day, because if you're the only two Caucasians in a sea of Asians, you are by default assumed to be Russian. Why else would two Caucasians be there, other than to cheer on their motherland?

 

So what is Duanwu Jie all about anyway?  If you'll bear with me, here's a little history lesson--I promise it will bring a bit more sense to a holiday that involves dragon boat races and throwing rice into rivers!

Today, June 6, is Duanwu Jie--Double Fifth Day. The date changes every year. It's the fifth day of the fifth lunar month in the Chinese calendar and the final day of the three day celebration in honor of the poet Qu Yuan (340-278BC). Qu was a much loved member of the royal family who fought against corruption in the court. He was also a minister to the Zhou Emperor in his home state of Chu. This era is known as the Warring States Period, when many feudal states were trying to carve out their own kingdoms. When the Emperor allied Chu with the increasingly powerful state of Qin, Qu was exiled for his strong opposition to this alliance. In exile, Qu taught and wrote a prolific amount of poetry, for which he is remembered today. Twenty-eight years into his exile, the state of Qin conquered his home state of Chu. In despair, he wrote this final poem, and then drowned himself in the Milou River, on the 5th day of the 5th lunar month. (See, I told you this was related to the holiday!)

Many a heavy sigh I have in my despair,
Grieving that I was born in such an unlucky time.
I yoked a team of jade dragons to a phoenix chariot,
And waited for the wind to come,
to soar up on my journey.

It is said that Qu was so loved, that the local fisherman raced out in long boats beating drums to scare the fish away, and threw zongzi (rice dumplings) into the water so the braver fish not scared off by the drums would not eat Qu Yuan's body.  So to this day, people commemorate his death with dragon boat races and the eating of zongzi. The Chinese also believe if you can stand a raw egg on it's end today, the rest of the year will be very lucky.

We finally made it!

Starting line

It really was fun to watch. And talk about synchronization! The fast teams just looked flawless, and then there were some pokey teams wearing life jackets.

Before the final races, they painted the dragons' eyes red in order to wake them up.

We made some new friends!

These girls were darling! Twelve years old and eager to speak English with us. They were surprised we could speak a little Chinese ourselves! They were very outgoing and precocious (which Stella and her friends were constantly apologizing for, but I thought they were darling). They even told Brian he needed to shave! They were ecstatic when I asked to take a picture with them.

Then there was Stella's friend's brother's mother-in-law with her grandson. He was intrigued yet terrified by Brian.

Then these boys joined the bandwagon. Doesn't Brian look thrilled at this point?

The two younger boys were darling and although they didn't speak English, they seemed content just comparing their shoe size to Brian's, checking out his watch, and trying to touch his hair when he wasn't looking. When I pulled the camera out, the older boy seriously tackled the two kids just so he could be in it as well. Obnoxious. This photo is after giving him the stink eye to calm down. Lastly there was a random woman who gave me her baby (who immediately started crying),  took a photo, and left. Bizarre. We were truly a tourist attraction.

On to the races! Here's the Russians ready for action. They placed 2nd, so they advanced to the finals.

In the middle of the races, this garbageman trolled right on through.

 

So I know this was a long post--I hope making it to the end was tolerable! It was just such a fun day I didn't want to leave anything out. The only photo I have of the whole group we spent the day with (it grew to 3 of Stella's friends by the afternoon) is out of focus....but hopefully we can spend more time with them in the future. I truly had a fantastic day--hopefully they did too and didn't simply feel like they were doing Stella a favor by spending time with us. Regardless, I'm officially declaring it "my best day in China (so far)."